Chapter 37

In the chaos that followed, in the rushing and screaming and jostling as people ran to go find a class royal or someone else who could help, I was the only one who watched Fergus—how he slipped through the tumult and vanished.

Even Jenia kept her eyes locked on Mr. Fenway's body as everyone bowed over it, trying to shake him awake, though I had a feeling she'd watched him leave out of the corner of her eye. She, too, knew of his connection with mold.

She, too, knew he'd done it. Killed Mr. Fenway.

I was still silent and shaking by the time Mr. Gleekle charged into the musty, rotting classroom and bent next to Mr. Fenway's corpse overflowing with mold.

"Oh, my God."

"What the hell is coming out of him?"

"He decayed from the inside out!"

I couldn't hear what Mr. Gleekle was saying over the wails and cries of my classmates, but I floated toward him like a ghost, knowing I had to tell him. Had to tell him that Fergus had murdered a teacher simply because that teacher had embarrassed him.

Don't.

Coen's voice dripped with deadly command.

Come to me, Rayna. Leave the classroom. Don't say a word. Right now.

I didn't know where he was, but I didn't question him. That tone had me obeying without thought—not because he was using mind control on me right now, but because… because I simply trusted him. I turned, not even pausing to tell Emelle or Rodhi where I was going, and stumbled my way up the steps, into piercing sunlight, where his waiting arms gathered me into a crushing squeeze.

He must have heard the panic in everyone's mind and come running.

"Why?" I choked. "I know he did it, Coen. Why shouldn't I tell?"

All around us, instructors and students were flooding into the Wild Whispering sector, asking each other what was going on. Monkeys chittered on the rooftops, filling each other in. Birds flitted overhead, screeching, "Death! Death! Death!"

Nobody paid attention to Coen and me, huddled against the wall.

"There was a murder three years ago during the annual pentaball tournament," Coen muttered, his eyes roving the oncoming surge of people. "The Good Council showed up to investigate. They don't take deaths lightly, because…"

He finished that sentence in my mind. Because it demonstrates an overabundance of power and ruthlessness. If you tell Mr. Gleekle your suspicions about Fergus, you will be interrogated in full, and the Good Council will know about…well, everything you know.

I cocked my head at him, suddenly suspicious about the way he'd worded that.

There was no time to contemplate it, though. Coen tugged me forward, and there was a possessiveness in his vice-like grip that certainly hadn't been there a month ago. I might have resisted if that horrid image wasn't plaguing my mind: Fergus's black mold overflowing in Mr. Fenway's gaping mouth.

"Here we are."

We rounded a corner, pressing into a dark shadowy area of the Manipulator sector, where a granite pathway led to a pristine white box of a building.

I blinked, surprised to find them already waiting for us—Garvis, stroking his mustache excessively, Terrin, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Sylvie clinging to Sasha's arm.

"In," Coen ordered them all.

Garvis turned, hooked his thumb into a metal latch, and slid a hatch sideways into the wall. After we'd all trampled inside, the hatch glided shut behind us.

"What is this place?" I managed to say.

There was only one room in this building, and it was so empty and white and symmetrical that my head began to spin.

Four identical walls. A smooth ceiling. A polished marble floor. No windows. Just that camouflaged hatch behind us.

"We call it the Isolator," Coen answered. "It's one of the classrooms we use for our Blocking Shielding lessons, but I've never dared bring you here before because people are usually using it to practice. Right now, though, while everyone is focused on Mr. Fenway, I figured we could all use it to talk."

"The Isolator," I repeated.

Garvis rolled his shoulders, as if preparing for a mental fight.

"There's a ward imbued in its walls. While we're in here, no other Mind Manipulator can hear what we're saying from the outside. It's meant to help us focus on whoever's directly in front of us rather than all the random people passing by outdoors."

I'd never given much thought to how… chaotic Mind Manipulating must be, but now my thoughts rushed back to the first branded Manipulator of our year, who'd sunk to her knees screaming onstage when all the voices had flooded her brain.

Coen was saying now, "I assume Garvis has filled you in on what happened?" When Terrin, Sasha, and Sylvie nodded, he nodded back. "Good. We don't have much time to prepare. Mr. Gleekle will be calling in the Good Council any moment, so here's what we know: Rayna thinks it was a boy in her class named Fergus who did it by urging mold to grow at an alarming rate in the teacher's body."

I actually hadn't come to a conclusion more complex than "he did it," but I was grateful that Coen had shaped my fear into an actual explanation.

"Wait a second," Terrin said. "Is that the kid who got beat to shit at my formal?"

"The very same," I said weakly. "I think he's… pissed that no one's taking him seriously. He wants people to be afraid of him, and when it became clear that even the oldest, frailest person on campus doesn't bat an eye his way, he—"

I trailed off, because "exploded" wasn't the right word, not when I'd seen how expressionless he'd been moments before.

No, this had been planned, I realized with a rush of horror. Fergus had been waiting for a moment to test his new killing power. Rather than drowning people in mold from the outside, he could now do it from the inside.

"The point is," Coen pressed on, "members of the Good Council will be here any moment to start scouring the minds of every single person on this campus. You four—" He eyed me, Terrin, and the twins "—won't be safe while they're here, so you'll need to stick with me or Garvis during the entirety of their investigation so that we can guard your minds."

At my questioning gaze, Garvis explained in a low voice, "We do this every time the Good Council decides to look into a surplus of power. Coen and I can feed them false information and thoughts and memories if they decide to come poking around in your brain. Or Sasha's, Sylvie's, or Terrin's."

"But it prickles," Sasha warned through her teeth.

"Yeah," Sylvie said. "I'm not looking forward to that sensation again."

Coen glared at them. "Yeah, well, I'm not looking forward to a Good Council Mind Manipulator finding out that we'd be a perfect group to haul up to Bascite Mountain for torture."

So he'd relayed to them, then, what Ms. Pincette had told me all those months ago about what truly happened to those who failed the Final Test. For some reason, the thought that Coen had included his friends in that knowledge, however dark and dreadful, made something in my chest inflate with pride.

It meant he trusted them with the fates of their own futures.

Coen glanced behind him, toward that camouflaged hatch.

"Sasha, Sylvie, how about you sleep with Garvis tonight, while Terrin sleeps with Rayna and me?"

Sleeps? When Coen had said we'd need to stick to him and Garvis, I hadn't realized it would apply to bedtime, too. Although, now that I thought about it… the Good Council Mind Manipulators weren't going to withhold themselves from someone's memories just because it was the middle of the night.

In fact, invading people's minds while they slept would probably be easier.

"With all due respect, brother," Terrin said, clapping Coen on the back, "Kimber's sort of kept that rumor going about how you're banging three women at once." He jerked a head at me, Sylvie, and Sasha, the latter of whom snarled in distaste. "If the twins slept with Garvis tonight, it might create a new rumor and garner some attention we don't need right now. But if they sleep withyou and Rayna, it would fall in line with the already-established rumor and no one would think twice."

Coen glanced at me, a helpless expression capsizing over his face. The logic made sense to me, though, so I nodded my agreement.

Are you sure you're okay with it? he asked mind-to-mind.

You don't need to feel defensive about protecting your family, Coen.

Relief flickered through his eyes. Thank you. For trusting my intentions.

Then he tossed a nod at Terrin. "Right. The twins and Rayna will sleep with me tonight and you'll sleep with Garvis."

Terrin clapped Garvis on the back. "We can pretend to pass out drunk on the rooftop again like we did last time. Nobody will blink twice at us if we're surrounded by bottles. Especially after an exciting day of instructors dying and such."

"Terrin!" Sylvie cried, nudging him in the ribs. "Have some tact."

"Oops, right." Terrin glanced at me. "I'm sorry for your loss, Rayna."

"Oh, no I—I didn't know him very well. He was just…" I stumbled over my words. "I just hope he doesn't have any family on the island. They'd be devastated to learn what happened."

Mr. Fenway probably did have a family out there, though. A family that Fergus clearly hadn't thought about when he'd told his mold to kill.

Asshole guys grow up to be abusive men. I wasn't sure which of those Fergus qualified as now, an asshole or a real abuser—perhaps being a murderer surpassed both of those—but I did hope Dionysia's Mind Manipulators would somehow manage to sniff him out without violating any of my friends.

Because if Fergus stayed, I knew that mold would eventually come for Gileon.

And me.

Coen escorted Sasha and Sylvie to their house to grab nightgowns and toiletries, clutching my hand the entire time we waited for them on their front steps. After they returned, he took us all to my own house so that I could do the same.

By this time, stars were pulsing into the gray film of dusk overhead, but the entire campus buzzed with nervous conversation as if nobody would be heading to bed for a while. I actually had to shove myself through two Wild Whisperers locked in conversation in the doorway, debating how Mr. Fenway had died.

Once I got to the bunkroom, Emelle sprang upon me.

"Rayna! Where have you been? I didn't realize you were gone until after they took Mr. Fenway's body away. Then I was so worried, I asked some birds to keep a look out for you, and Wren is out trying to find you right now."

"I'm sorry, Melle." I rummaged in my drawers for some sleepwear and a toothbrush. "I felt nauseous seeing Mr. Fenway like that, so I ran outside to puke."

I didn't know why I was lying, not after all Emelle had done to earn my trust, but… no. I straightened. She deserved the truth.

Clearing the uncertainty from my throat, I said, "I'm actually going to spend the night with Coen." When she raised her eyebrows, I peeked around to make sure we were alone and whispered, "if the Good Council finds out what Lord Arad revealed to us in that abandoned classroom, I'm as good as smoke."

I expected a sudden glimmer of understanding to dawn on Emelle's face at that, but she just pinched the lines of her forehead together.

"What are you talking about, Rayna?"

I stared at her. My nightgown dangled from my fingers.

"Lord Arad. The vampire heir. Remember what he said? About my mother?"

Emelle took a step back. Her heel hit the foot of our bunkbed.

"Are you feeling alright, Rayna? Maybe the events of today have gotten to your head. I've never heard of this Lord Rad thing. And what's this about vampires?"

She let go of a nervous chuckle. I stared and stared at her.

Finally, I chuckled, too. There was only one explanation for her bizarre forgetfulness: Coen had erased her memory of Lord Arad. And as much as I wanted to feel angry at him for that, to scold him for touching my friend's head against her will, I couldn't. Not when Emelle's lack of awareness would protect her tonight.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." I reached out to squeeze her hand. "The events of today have just gotten to my head. I'm sorry."

Emelle shook her head. "Don't be. We're all pretty shaken up. Poor Mr. Fenway. I just can't fathom what kind of disease would knock him out like that."

At that moment, Coen's voice sliced through me at the same time that a hundred or more vultures screeched out words of profanity from the sky outside.

I ran to the window. They'd been tethered, those vultures had, to a new carriage that was angling toward the courtyard now. And from the curses flying out of their beaks, ringing through the air, I knew they'd been forced into pulling the carriage.

Hurry, Rayna, Coen was growling into me.

Hurry, because the Good Council was here.